


What Was Your Name Again?

by VioletThePorama



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: (It's just Benrey he's fine), Blood and Injury, Character Study, Giving A Character Backstory, HLVRAI, Half-Life VR But The NPC's Are Only Kind Of Aware, I spell it Benry the whole time, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Body Horror, Nonbinary Benrey (Half-Life), Nonbinary Character, Obsessed with the game aspect of this, Romance, This sounds really dark but I swear I just wanted more Forzen content, benrey and forzen are exes, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25855477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: It feels as if there is something controlling you. Something that pulls on your consciousness, yanking you away from the dangers of knowing too much. At the same time, there's something keeping you afloat, awake and aware.Maybe the best way to describe it is that it feels like two entities are playing tug-o-war with you in the center, and you're the only one losing. You just want to watch Youtube. Maybe graduate a little.a.k.a somebody went 'what if Forzen and Benrey dated' and I decided I needed to write that very long fic. And then some aftermath.
Relationships: Benrey/Forzen (Half-Life), Darnold/Forzen (Half-Life)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	What Was Your Name Again?

It took you years to learn how to speak. This initially worried your parents, before the doctor told them to let you develop at your own pace. For a long time, you remained quiet, surrounded, and often overlooked among the plethora of kids, though it was never malicious on your parents’ part. You were simply in the background, where you could draw away and stay inside when your brothers and sisters got too loud. Aside from when the lot of you were kicked out of the house so Mother could clean or take work calls, of course. 

Your years were spent in horseplay with siblings that resulted in more than a few concussions, and time spent zoning out in front of the TV while 4kids dubs played. Most memories from this time are dull and subdued. Something yellowed at the edges with time, kept out of nostalgia but left forgotten because the picture was too out of focus. 

One particularly bad concussion made your parents ban several games and play areas, and left you sitting inside more often. Instead of being forced outside with the others, you had the option to opt out of some of their games. 

The first thing you found that felt Real (something… clearer than everything else around you. Something that came into focus with sharp clarity) was a series of videos by someone called the Irate Gamer, which you proceeded to watch on a regular basis. Your parents wouldn’t buy you a bulk of the games you came back from the videos with requests for, so you binged videos of play throughs with one of your brothers instead. 

One Christmas, once you wore down on them enough with lists and prompting motions, and everybody was tired of you hogging the family computer, you were given your own.

The next thing you found was a chat client, where you met somebody with the screen name BBBBBB. They introduced themselves as being just slightly older than you and were into most of the same things (plus several games that you pretended to know, but unfortunately had little knowledge on). Your new friend was always busy during the day, but awake long into the night, so until middle school, the two of you mostly chatted for an hour or two at a time just before you had to go. They typed in short, scattered sentences for the most part. Occasionally though, they would dump paragraph upon paragraph about seemingly inconsequential things that developers changed between two games, going on long rants for you to see when you looked back at your messages in the morning. 

It was soon after this that you began to talk, in short, stuttering sentences. Your family was initially overjoyed, but it blew over pretty quickly when you retreated in on yourself again. It was nothing special to you. 

After a while of knowing your online friend, one night they abruptly introduced themself as Benry. When you asked, skeptically, if that was their real name, they sent their approximation of online laughter (a bland-looking  _ ‘ha ha ha’ _ ) and none-too-subtly poked at whether or not you had a name. 

And of course, you did. You had no problem telling them, even. But for some reason, it eluded your grasp when you reached for it. The knowledge, while it should have been intrinsic, seemed to escape you. It was lost amongst the chaos of having siblings, you supposed. A word you can hardly recall hearing.

After a long moment of floundering, you introduce yourself as Frozen. You let out a relieved huff of air when you received a clunky digital grin as a reply. 

After that, the two of you moved to another client (this one advertising a voice feature), and talked to each other in grainy quality. It was the most you had spoken to anybody in such a short time, and hours were spent troubleshooting clients and joking about levels of games until your throat was sore. Still, you went back every evening, staying up late into the night and whispering into your mic so you didn’t wake your sister from across the hall. Benry didn’t care that their sentences came out half completed, just like yours. And you didn’t care that Benry often needed an extra minute to process whatever was said to them. It worked out like most other things didn’t.

Once they realized you were talking more, your family tried to include you in more discussions. But they felt distant, and every answer you gave them prompted more questions, until you answered every expectant inquiry with a short, stiff answer and eventually stopped responding again. It was more comfortable when you weren’t expected to know how to articulate what your mind wanted to say and could rely on Benry to pick up the other half of your meanings. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and school was long and hard (Benry would make a joke there). Impulsively, one day after arriving home from the bus, you dodged your siblings and retreated to your room. Then you took a picture of yourself. you uploaded it to your computer and sent it over to Benry. 

For a while, you received no reply. You tried not to worry about it but couldn't help scrolling up to take in all the imperfections of your portrait, picking them out again and again. How your hair was too scruffy, hastily cut by one of your sisters. Already, there were lines around your brows from squinting, both from hours during the day where you were out in the sun with your siblings, and from refusal to wear your glasses. Under one of your eyes was some healing road rash from when one of your sisters had knocked you over when playing, and a faint scar marred your nose from when you had fallen into some rocks a few years ago. You’d been told before that you always looked angry, with your face twisted into something of a scowl. When you looked at your picture, you could finally see it. 

By the time you had been called away and returned from another tense discussion at dinner, where you sat in silence while his parents tried to talk down your brother from a degree in literature, Benry had sent a picture of themself. 

You glanced around your room before you opened it up, suspicious though you didn’t know why. Once alone for certain, you looked at the picture of your friend. 

Benry, true to their words, looked just about your age. The picture was in poor lighting and a bit blurry, casting a shadow over some of their face, much to your disappointment. Through the shadow, you could make out something that looked like little lines of birthmarks on Benry’s cheeks. They had dark, unruly hair, longer than you had expected, partially tucked underneath a ratty-looking beanie. It kind of looked greasy, like they hadn’t washed it in a few days, but it also looked soft. (The urge to touch it was overwhelming, despite the distance between them.) Benry’s skin was pallid, a sickly white that seemed to hedge into something unnatural. One of their ears stuck out where their beanie was crooked, and despite the pudge to their face, Benry’s eyes were sunken in. Said eyes were bright, but the color was hard to make out.

You couldn’t breathe, and by the time you were done staring at Benry, the other had already rambled about a player in a game being annoying for a half hour before they left to play something else. 

They came up almost exclusively when you talked the next day. And the day after that. One of your brothers told you that they liked it better when you were quiet. One of your sisters said you should be a poet.

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen and confiding in Benry was easy. Easier than anything else in the world. You could rant at Benry about how you felt about games that everybody else liked that you didn’t, in Youtubers, where you had an on-sight hatred for the Angry Video Game Nerd, and in things you never spoke aloud to anybody else. 

Things poured from your mouth in halting, blundering syllables. I don’t feel real, sometimes, you once told them.

The clatter of their microphone sounded over the line as they mumbled their response, near-inaudible confirmation that they had heard you.

Yeah, you had mumbled back. Then you pressed the mic slightly closer in leu of real proximity and told them that you always felt Real when talking to them.

Benry was quiet for a while. Then they gave a pleased hum and asked if you wanted to play a co-op. You did. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and your parents wanted to know what you wanted to be when you grew up. As you entered high school, you were pressed into discovering what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. Several things were off limits, either from knowledge of what your parents fought your older siblings about, or what you simply weren’t interested in or good at. Most subjects were difficult, and when you were not interested in them, you didn’t try. It left you with slightly below average grades, and a desire to stay up later and later and talk with Benry instead of thinking about school.

It got to the point that Father snapped, and you turned and scowled and told him in his slow, precise words that didn’t feel like your own, that you would be going to a military academy. After that, it became the truth, even if it hadn’t been in the moment. You weren’t sure where the idea had come from, it was just something to appease your parents, though the idea seemed oddly right once it had been twisted around in your head for a while. Sure. You could handle that.

It took a few, awful weeks without talking to Benry (or any of your other online friends, for that matter) to get your grades up to float just along the line of acceptance, so you could keep an eye out for any extra programs to help work towards such an academy. Finally, with a better handle on the abrupt decision, you talked to Benry again, telling them that you were going to be in the army. 

Waiting a few minutes for a response, you moved your character around and hopped on a few ledges as you watched Benry’s character take a spike of lag and fall off a cliff. 

Cool, they eventually offered, voice crackling through the mic. They told you that you were ‘ _ supposed _ ’ to be one.

Skeptic of your decision, you moved on and asked them what they were going to be, and they responded by telling you bluntly that they were going to be a problem. You snorted and asked what they were  _ really _ going to be. 

A security guard, maybe, they muttered. They didn’t sound happy about it. When you asked how they were going to achieve that, they had no response, deflecting with their own question about what  _ you _ really wanted to be. 

A Yugioh villain, you decided, and they laughed in a sharp staccato. Then they told you that you couldn’t be a villain on Team Nice. Which is what you both were part of, they continued, sounding like they had made it up on the spot. 

That’s us, you mused to yourself, and they hummed in response. 

The two of you took out the next wave of enemies, and you couldn’t stop grinning. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and you watched other people more than you paid any attention to yourself. In high school, people’s eyes wandered. When yours didn’t, you came to an abrupt realization. It was the only thing you kept from Benry. For the moment, anyway.

Instead, you tried dating a girl. She was nice (you remembered talking to her several times in middle school), and even watched the same kind of videos as you. You were both quiet and everybody already teased the two of you about dating because you worked together on projects sometimes. 

But it didn’t feel right. Calling her, like one of your sisters urged you to do, took up all the time that you could have used to talk to Benry, and when you reached to take her hand, it felt wrong in your grasp. Something about her smile was off, and even her laugh didn’t sound like it should have. When walking, catching her in your peripherals, it felt like you were being followed by a stranger. It set you on edge and left you quieter and more withdrawn than you had been in years.

It didn’t feel Real. 

Breaking it off after only a few weeks was the only logical conclusion. You went home and stood in front of your parents. When you had their attention, you stuttered out an explanation. They accepted quickly, almost dismissively (though Mother refused to talk about it again after that). It felt anti-climactic as Mother gave you a stiff nod, and Father patted your back almost hard enough to barrel you over. Then they moved onto one of your sisters to deal with her boyfriend crisis.

So you returned to the depths of your room and called Benry for the first time in days. 

They poked fun at you, asking where you had been. If you had fallen off a cliff or run into an impenetrable barricade. Their voice was impassive as always, but you could make out the hint of curiosity. 

You were dating a girl, you told them. Were. Past tense. 

They made a noise that you couldn’t make out before asking if she was hot. You tried to swallow down the growing anxiety and stared at a Beyblade on the floor as you told Benry that you liked how they looked better.

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen and you were dating Benry. 

They lived further south, and you had yet to meet them in person, but you would soon. You had a car (an old one that had belonged to one of your sisters), and a break coming up that apparently coincided with the one Benry had. Since you were not an exceptional student, nobody needed you at any extracurriculars, and you were home free. 

As soon as the break finally came, you hit the road. After dropping off a sister in the city on the way so she could meet with one of her friends, you continued several more hours on to the town Benry was in. Only once you were within a half hour of them did you pull over to a hotel and sleep.

When finally meeting up with them, Benry was on you in less than a minute. While you had worried that you would end up being clingy, your friend was unable to detach themself from you for even a minute. 

(They sang and something leaked out of their mouth. When you went to ask them about it, one of the bubbles popped in your face, and the question slipped away. They seemed a bit disappointed for a split-second.)

Benry was a good bit shorter than you, though they had more weight to their frame where you were taller and had some muscular bulk. It made them a bit difficult to pull around, but they stayed firmly nestled against your shirt as the two of you walked through the house, Benry muttering the name of rooms at you. 

You saw no trace of anybody else in the house. You weren’t going into any of the side rooms of course and knew that Benry was still a bit young to be living alone, so you asked him where his parents were.

Your significant other waved a hand dismissively and reached up to tug at their hat. They told you that everyone else was gone. Then they hurriedly added the word ‘trip’ onto this, looking pleased with themself. The house was needed, they informed you, so their family left on a trip.

You nodded, dimly aware of the fact that Benry had never mentioned any family, just friends. That was fine, though. Some people were private about stuff like that, so you put any questions about where they had gone on the back-burner and sat down to play Mario while they twisted around you like a snake.

You kind of sucked at the game, though you couldn’t tell if it was from lack of experience or because you were distracted. Benry was like a leech, and you did nothing to deter them, encouraging them even. It was nice to have room, but your family had learned to give you enough space that you suddenly felt very alone, remedied by the person next to you. Together, you danced your ways through figuring out motions, clumsy as you were. 

When you pressed small, quick pecks to Benry’s hat or nuzzled your face into the back of their neck where hair poked out, Benry butted your chin and always kept a hand on your arm. They dozed on the couch, and ordered pizza. Benry only vanished once or twice for a few hours at a time for what they claimed was a cart-pushing job at the nearest store. 

You could remember your time with Benry with more clarity than anything else you had ever been through. 

The week was spent playing games and yelling at Youtubers together. After that, the two of you made a point to spend all your breaks like that. Sometimes, Benry even met you halfway, and you explored a city together before rooming at a hotel, where each of you bought a separate cheap room, and always ended up falling asleep together. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and you still had trouble talking. Often, your words caught in your throat, and you had to force your way through interactions with everyone else. Where the memories of those conversations immediately faded, blurry and watered down directly after they stopped talking, conversations with Benry were sharp and clear in your mind. Even with their confusing qualities that made your head hurt, your significant other made more sense than anyone else did. With Benry, there was no loud racket or expectations you were supposed to fill.

Until there were. 

I don’t get it, you told them, forcing your tongue to work. Hating it more and more as you tripped over their meanings and defaulted to what you had to repeat to your teachers after a class. The sound of something breaking crackled through the line. 

You flinched at the volume on the other end as Benry snapped over it, static lacing their voice as they reminded you that you felt Real around them. You had said so.

You insisted that you did. That they felt Real.

Then why don’t you see it, they growled, for lack of a better term.

The two of you had been chatting like normal when Benry had mentioned that it was getting close to time for something. Your significant other had been getting rather cryptic lately, and you had been splitting your time between acting like you knew what Benry was talking about and brushing it off as their usual troll logic. That had apparently been the wrong thing to do. 

At a loss for words, you stuttered that you didn’t know. 

It threw you for a loop when Benry snapped on the other end, that there was nothing there.  _ Nothing _ . It was the first time you had ever heard Benry raise his voice, and you floundered for a response, asking where they meant and looking around your room as if it would help. But everything was there.

Benry sounded lost when they continued, once again at a monotone, that nothing was Real. You ached to ask what was wrong, to  _ understand _ . But then they kept talking, sounding a tad annoyed as they suggested that the two of you should just play the game already.

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and you were supposed to meet up with Benry again. It was the summer before college, (Benry was already finding a job somewhere as a security guard. It was a fairly decent job, though you weren't quite sure how they managed scoring at such a big company without a college degree. You couldn’t really remember them mentioning school ever...) Benry took you down an amazingly empty street. It felt suspiciously isolated, though it was in the middle of the town at noon.

Looking around for any sign of people, you halted in the middle of the sidewalk and asked them where you were going.

Benry didn’t answer, simply motioning for you to keep up. You obliged and sat at a bench when prompted. When Benry took your hand, you zoned out staring near the sun until they told you to look at their face.

So, you looked. Usually you avoided looking people in the eye, unsettled by what you might find in anybody’s expressions, and terrified that you may be locked into a battle (or conversation) with them were the other person to receive any attention. But this was Benry, so you looked. 

Except you couldn’t quite look Benry in the eye no matter how hard you squinted. Pulling your gaze up above their shirt collar, unless it was to peer at their hat, felt impossible. There was a suspiciously blank spot in your peripherals where the rest of their face was, and before you could think about the implications, your mind blanked. (You couldn’t see how much more skeletal Benry’s frame looked, how they looked so sickly. Their skin stretched over their body, ready to slough off of their frame. The way that the lines you had always taken for birthmarks opened, sprouting into a multitude of eyes. All of this was beyond you.) At a loss for what to say, or what they wanted you to look for, you told them that they were cute.

You were met with a blank stare. That hadn’t been what Benry was going for. Unsure and suddenly hesitant to say anything else, you shrugged. 

The other stood up, and suddenly they towered above you. (Higher and higher and-)

You don’t know how you didn’t realize it before. You offhandedly complimented their height because they had grown since you last saw them. Though that was odd, because you remembered them complaining that they had stopped getting taller, and the subsequent fun you had at their expense for it.

Benry stared at you, and suddenly they didn’t look much taller at all. They sat back down with a defeated ‘oomph’, and reached a hand out in front of the bench. When they brought it back, there was a soda grasped in their palm. It was odd, but you could never really find it in yourself to question it. Benry always seemed to have stuff stashed on their person. 

Trying to prompt them into telling you what they had wanted you to know was no good. They simply lowered their hand and told you that they thought you had known already. 

Shutting up seemed to be the best option.

Benry looked ahead at the empty road and muttered to themself, though they seemed to think that they were still conversing with you, as they glanced in your direction every few minutes. The only things you really caught were snatches of them murmuring about your family and the stupid planet Earth.

Trying to play it safe, you suggested playing Beyblades. They agreed.

You went to a hotel and played Beyblades. 

The next day, instead of a morning greeting, Benry snapped at you that nothing had been real, and that you were the only member of Team Nice. That you always had been. 

You didn’t stop talking to Benry immediately. It was a slow thing, where the two of you slowly drifted apart and your conversations turned into annoyed muttering from both sides rather than discussions or rants. 

So eventually, halfway through your first year of military academy, you told them that you were too busy to talk to them any longer. (They responded with a high-pitched note of distress that almost blew out your headphones before blowing you off entirely.) And without further obstructions, you carried on.

___________________________________

Your name was… you couldn’t recall.

Logically, you knew that you had ended up in the Black Mesa facilities because they were having an emergency. You also knew that there was still a year and a half left of studies before you were to be deployed, but that the military had been running short somewhere and were offering a full diploma and promised years of service if students volunteered. By process of elimination, you could gather that you were one of the volunteers, with grades that were just barely kept afloat. (You were never going to pass at the rate you were going) That’s right. Hours upon hours had been spent trying to keep up in subjects that everybody else seemed to know, so joining in where you could get everything over with (even if it seemed too good to be true) was a no brainer. 

You just. 

Couldn’t remember anything else. And it frustrated you to no end. 

There was something  _ off _ about most of what you saw in Black Mesa. Everybody knew they were corrupt (there was no evidence. Everybody just knew it), with the types of experiments they used their funding for. But that wasn’t all. There was something that seemed to yank at your strings, and only select things seemed to stand out against the haze of darkness that your vision turned into.

The Soldier (that's… you?) remembered laying back in a chair and vanishing into a wall when a team of scientists tried to kill you. Whatever had been moving you was  _ wrong _ and felt  _ invasive _ and you could barely remember what didn’t seem to be fully you. It was muddled and hard to reach because the puppet master was always pulling you back the moment that it started to make sense.

The Soldier remembered turning to Benry and firing at them point-blank (their body flopped back and the light left their eyes and it  _ served them right _ ). Then you talked with one of the scientists about Beyblades. There should have been some in your bag, but the familiar bulk of them seemed to be missing.

The Soldier remembered bits and pieces of threatening a dog, who was… immortal? Your name was gone, on the tip of your tongue but somewhere that you couldn’t access. The feeling was horribly familiar, though you hadn’t felt it in years. Not since a smaller, pudgy version of your ex-friend had asked if you had something to call yourself. 

The only part that made any sense was your overwhelming anger at the Angry Video Game Nerd. Even then, it was like something was scraping through your mind and dumping the first thing it found under  _ anger _ out of your mouth. 

Then, you were laying in front of an angry-looking, blood streaked scientist dressed in an orange suit. Target Freeman. You opened your mouth to tell him something before whatever was controlling your movements  _ yanked _ you away.

When you came to, you found himself in a hall completely different from where you distantly remembered sitting with the dog in. Miraculously, you were alive, but there was an overexerted ache in your limbs, and a throbbing in your head that made you reel and totter as you stood. 

You hefted the gun that The Soldier had used and stumbled through the halls. Upon seeing some, you unloaded a clip into some sort of crab. Traversing the rooms took a while, as each one seemed to be filled with more enemies than the last one. You cursed out the scientists for not taking any of the aliens down for you as you shot one of the electrical ones in the head and hurried off down the hall.

Immediately, you ran into a den of dog-like creatures with a horrific number of teeth. 

Three of the four dogs went down easily, and you stepped back to fumble with a reload, before realizing you were lower on ammo than expected. Anmo should have been the first thing you had checked; it was a basic rule- but you  _ remembered _ having more. You… thought so, anyway.

The dog lunged, gnashing it’s teeth, and you turned, taking off in a sprint. The dog grabbed your leg at the same time, sinking its teeth into the flesh of your calf. You cried out in pain as you proceeded to experience how running worked, and the leg with the dog attached to it hit the ground, making its teeth sink in more as gravity failed to dislodge it. Trying to pull away just dragged the thing along with you, heavier than expected, and in a fit of desperation, you swiveled around and slammed the butt of your gun into the creature's head. You hit it again, producing a satisfying crack, and the beast let go, staggering. 

Not giving it a moment of recovery, you brandished your gun like a bat and swung it with the intent of bashing the thing's brains in. The dog fell back, and you jumped forward and stomped your foot down, forcing a boot through the things’ skull. For good measure, you brought your foot up again, past the resulting gore, and stomped again and again until you were certain of its demise.

Then you limped away from the creature, panting. More ammo was a necessity. A brief check told you that there was no more in your bag. Before you moved on, you staggered to the side of the room and leaned against the wall to inspect your leg. Through the torn fabric of your pants were painful puncture wounds that stained the legs of your pants with blood. You reached down and pulled the pant leg tighter around your calf, tying it with a strip of string you found in your bag before moving on.

There were a few more corpses in the room, no soldiers (you think they were supposed to be in a different wing), but some scientists. There wasn’t much hope, but you stepped over to check their bodies for ammo all the same. To the best of your abilities, you ignored the wounds and dried blood that caked their faces and rifled through their lab coats. No luck. 

With that taken care of, you hobbled down the path. After maybe an hour of walking, you found an oblong piece of wood that looked like it used to be part of a chair and stuck it through the loops of your bag. You looted a few more corpses, finding a snack bar in the pocket of a scientist that you ate as you walked along. 

Your leg hurt whenever you stepped or stretched it, but it was manageable. A few more crabs had to be taken out with the help of the piece of wood, though one managed to sink into the flesh of your arm while you were swinging it.

That was fine. What  _ wasn’t  _ fine was how when you came across a small cluster of soldiers a little bit later (feeling a bit hot and feverish. Unsteady on your feet as you tried not to think about what might have been controlling you), and they began to shoot at you.

Seriously questioning the mental stability of the soldiers, you ducked behind a wall as their bullets bounced off the metal. Around the corner, you urgently called out your rank and that you had been separated from your troop, but they didn’t respond. When you yelled for them to stop shooting, the sound of footsteps drew near. 

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, you made a decision and raced down the hall. You entered a side door and made some noise to draw the soldier closer before standing against the wall and waiting, brandishing your wooden club. When the soldier poked into the room, you brought it down on his head, and then the back of his neck just to be sure. He went down frightening easily.

A frantic loot through his bag supplied more ammo, luckily it was the type your gun used. Quickly, you loaded your weapon and jumped out to where the other soldiers were waiting. Once more, you spat out that you were a fellow soldier, and to the best of your ability recited your rank and number (though they were harder to remember by the minute. You had gone rogue at some point, hadn’t you?). When they responded by aiming their guns, you let the adrenaline take over and riddled them full of bullets. 

You stood breathing heavily for a minute before the pain in your arm registered, telling you that you had been shot at least once. Crumpling to the ground, you grasped at it, breathing out painfully through gritted teeth. 

A quick glance around the room told you that there was no more immediate danger. (Unless somebody had heard your bullets.) It was fine. It gave you a moment to clumsily wrap your arm with the few bandages that you had been given in your bags (they were too cheap to supply you with more than a roll, it seemed, and you ended up using the rest of them on your arm as it continued to bleed through every layer you put around it).

It had been bleeding too heavily to see whether the bullet had exited, and you couldn’t quite see the other side of your arm for an exit wound. The bullet was probably still inside, but you were zoning out too much to care. 

Even as dazed as you were, the pain felt Real and that thought brought you to a moment of clarity. You pulled yourself over to the other soldiers bags and loaded some more ammo into your gun and pockets. Then you downed a bottle of water and sat against the wall, keeping your gun within reach. 

There was little that could be done. Supposedly, you had been in a squad for the majority of your time traversing Black Mesa, though you couldn’t remember any of their faces, or even recall the name of your superior. But there had been somebody backing you up before everything, and to no one’s surprise, it was harder to survive alone in an alien infested labyrinth. 

You weren’t sure how you had been cut off from the rest of the military, but even if you hadn’t alienated yourself from them whenever you were being used (like a puppet) you were definitely on their radar now that you had killed a few of their men. 

Really, none of what had been happening to you made any sense. Sure, you could get that there were aliens now. The scientists at Black Mesa had always been rather weird and vaguely feral, so whatever they were working on was no surprise. 

But nothing could explain the gaps in your memory. The fact that you had turned and  _ shot _ your ex. What was Benry even doing in such a place? (They had mentioned being a security guard, and they were dressed like one. There had been another guard dead in the halls earlier, one who looked just like Benry but wasn’t.) Hazy memories gave you an idea of Benry’s voice, telling you something in high pitched, hypnotic tones. 

Had you killed Benry? (It had felt horribly satisfying. You hadn’t spoken to Benry in years, but in retrospect, you couldn’t fully remember anything after your last meeting with him.) Where had you gotten a dog from? And most importantly, what were you still doing alive? Maybe the scientists had pulled you down the halls and left for some reason, but you didn’t know why you wouldn’t just have been killed. 

Trying to remember hurt your head, only working to worsen your developing migraine. Woozy from blood loss and whatever bacteria had been in those aliens’ saliva and teeth, you ducked your head and tried to doze. Perhaps things would make more sense when you woke up. Or you’d simply be dead. 

Either would work.

___________________________________

Your name was… still fuzzy. You couldn’t quite remember yet, and you’re distracted from trying to think of it by a noise in the room with you.

Instinct and adrenaline are what let you immediately raise your gun, aiming it at the sound. In the corner of the room nearing an exit, was a scientist. Poised to run. 

The scientist did a double take, probably having thought you were dead, and they yelped for you not to shoot. 

You shifted and winced as a burning pain coursed through your arm and reminded you of your injury. Quickly, you took stock of your leg. Worryingly numb. Then you turned your attention back to the hesitant looking scientist, who asked if you were going to shoot.

Why shouldn’t you, you grumbled, watching him. The scientist adjusted the bag he was carrying and gave you a once over. You bristled at the look and indicated once again that you had a gun.

The scientist, though still looking frazzled, calmed down enough to step closer to you. He mentioned that other soldiers would have shot at him by now.

You grumble and set your gun aside, within reach, and glance down at your wound to see what the scientist was so fussy over- oh. Well that wasn’t good. Blood had soaked through your bandages again. Slowly, you reached over to peel them off, only to startle when the man in the lab coat appeared at your side. 

He introduced himself as Darnold and told you in simple terms that if you weren’t going to shoot him, then he was going to help you. 

You, a soldier who had never made it to being a real soldier, stared at the scientist you were probably supposed to be killing. You tried to recall your rank, number, or any faces or names aside from the knowledge that you sucked at school to lead you in a direction. There was nothing. The scientist still looked a bit skittish, like a rabbit, so you looked away from your arm and let the scientist closer. 

Darnold nodded and hovered nearby. Slowly, when you realized what he was waiting for, moved your gun far enough away that it would be a struggle to reclaim it. The scientist gave you a brief nod and knelt next to you, focusing on the bandages. Darnold went on to tell you that none of the other soldiers had even  _ responded _ to him, aside from trying to hit him with bullets. According to Darnold, only one group had interacted with him since the Resonance Cascade.

You nodded vaguely, letting the scientist ramble about people on the ‘Science Team’, which sounded familiar, but hurt to think about. You winced as the bandage was pulled away, and bit back a noise of pain as the scientist immediately reached into the wound. You snapped at him that it was going to get infected.

Darnold gave you a look, his lips firmly pulled into a frown. He told you that he had a potion that would heal you, but that he needed to get the bullet out first. When you opened your mouth again, he simply said that he had potions for infection too. Then he asked your name.

You opened your mouth to object to any  _ potions _ , before remembering snatches of conversation about the scientists at Black Mesa being Weird. Clones and magic and aliens and policies that changed on the go and didn’t make any sense. So you shut your mouth and thought. 

You were… Forzen, you told him slowly. You could remember people making fun of the pronunciation in the past when you told them your name. Though the thought of you having one never seemed to cross their minds before you said it. (Even your family had balked at it when you mentioned your name to them…) 

Then you turned away from the scientist's smile and nod as he, none too gently, prodded around inside your arm. You muffled any noises you could (though it felt  _ awful _ and there were awful squelching noises coming from the wound as your skin was _ torn _ and tissue was searched), until Darnold finally emerged victorious, with a bullet grasped between his bloodied fingers.

Darnold held it up for you to see before flicking it away. He looked a bit too comfortable, covered in blood, even though he had just been talking about how upsetting it was that the Science Team had been so violent and bloodthirsty. You stared at him as he asked if you had any other wounds. 

It took a moment for you to pull yourself together, head still full of cotton, and you told Darnold that you had no other bullet wounds. The scientist waited patiently as you collected your words and told him that you had had a crab on your arm and a hound in your leg.

Darnold mumbled about incisions, and then about the crab wound going septic. Before you could worry about it, you were passed a soda. You stared at the can of what appeared to be Mountain Dew, at a loss. You wanted to hurl it across the room in frustration, but Darnold was going on about green being color coded for health. That it was a health potion. That you should drink it.

Deciding that you no longer cared about anything sane or holy, you did as you were told and tipped it back. As Darnold instructed, you spent a few minutes finishing the drink off. Then the two of you sat for a while. 

To your immense surprise, your leg began to tingle with sensation, and your arm burned less. Sitting up left you a bit woozy from blood loss, but you felt worlds better. When you could stand again, Darnold had stepped back to murmur thoughtfully about the length of time it had taken for his ‘potion’ to go into effect. When you collected your gun and looked expectantly at Darnold, the man clapped his hands together and picked up his bag.

He asked if the two of you should continue on and offered you what he claimed was a regular soda. You took the drink as you questioned whether or not he had any weapons.

Darnold told you that he had some explosive potions, and you glanced down the tunnels thoughtfully. Suddenly aware of how thick the scent of blood and death was, you turned to him and asked if he had ever held a gun.

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen and you were teaching Darnold how to use a gun. The scientist was a terrible shot. And worse, he was squeamish about shooting the next set of crabs he came across. 

Regardless, it was easier to get through the halls of Black Mesa with another person. Even if Darnold was only firing in self-defense, it kept a few more aliens at bay. Having a second eye was also very helpful, and even if the self-proclaimed mixologist didn’t know where you were, he was able to identify many of the machines in each room, and managed to direct you both through a few of the more dangerous devices. The labs were unfortunately set up like a puzzle, which you were bad at, but the scientist took to like a duck in water.

In turn, you were able to aid with the more active things, keeping the brunt of the enemies off now that you had had some rest, and someone to watch out for. You were even able to recall enough of the military's objective to keep your path from interceding with where the army was supposed to be set up. 

Another day was spent traversing the halls, though you often had to backtrack. Every time you worked up the nerve to be apologetic to your scientist companion, he just smiled awkwardly and offered you a drink from his never-ending supply, and then guessed at a new direction to try. Darnold refused to go outside when you grumbled about potential airstrikes, and you refused to swim through the water that flooded some of the lower levels, so the ways you could go were a bit limited. 

Most other scientists encountered were already dead upon arrival, and those that were still alive either didn’t react to anything the two of you did or ran off through the halls. 

You were pretty sure their running was your fault, but Darnold never mentioned anything about it, so you didn’t either.

There were a few soldiers scattered about who had apparently strayed from the rest of the troops, but like Darnold had said earlier, they were largely unresponsive unless the intended action was to pump you full of lead. 

Darnold was surprisingly capable once you stopped hounding him about the gun and let him utilize his potions. After he lobbed a drink in the direction of a group of crabs and blew them sky-high, you gave up on trying to corral him into using anything else, instead letting the scientist have his fun with explosives and potions of ‘hurt’. 

Half of what came out of the scientists’ mouth was pure gold, and the other half was just baffling. Sometimes it was a mix of the two (you couldn’t decide what you thought about the… Black Mesa silly straws), like how he claimed to be inventing Powerade with plans to mind control the general public. 

When you admitted to favoring Gatorade over Powerade, you were told that ‘that’s how they get you’, though you had no idea how Gatorade could have been worse than mind control. 

A few days after you woke up with no memory of your name, you sat on some boxes in a room, spacing out as Darnold rifled through his bag. Only after noticing some motion out of the corner of your eye did you try to focus on the scene before you. As you shuffled closer to the edges of the boxes, the room faded into tones of grays, and an imposing-looking man with short, dark hair and a business suit walked around the corner. 

The man greeted the two of you as gentlemen. You responded by jumping off your boxes and pointing your gun at his face. Darnold, a few feet to your left, startled at the man and flung a potion in his direction. It didn’t explode, but the smell of something noxious filled the air. 

The man looked vaguely annoyed and told him that he should refrain from doing that again if the two of you ever wanted to leave Black Mesa. 

That sounded like a threat, so you gestured with your gun and made a noise, trying to demand an explanation from him. Darnold however, seeming to recognize the guy, stuttered out a stiff apology. He motioned frantically to you, and it took you an embarrassing amount of time to put two and two together and point your gun down, scoffing to yourself.

In a wavering voice, Darnold asked the man if he was Gman. The suit simply stared at him, but it seemed to be enough of a confirmation for Darnold to panic out another apology.

You told them very frankly that you weren’t sorry.

Gman looked more bored than bothered by this and turned away. He waited a half second for you to get closer before he told you to follow him. When Darnold went to follow instructions, you motioned for him to halt, and barked out a question of where he was going. 

Emoting didn’t seem to be the guys strong suit, but you were used to that, so it was easy to pick apart the partial confusion and offended tone Gman responded with when he asked you to repeat yourself. 

You did so, asking where you were going and frowning in the way you knew made you look more intimidating with your facial scars all puffed out.

The man told you that you would accompany him to Chuck E. Cheese.

This was stunning enough for you to shut up and follow him. Upon shooting Darnold a bewildered glance, the scientist gave a weak shrug and fell in line with you. 

Then you went to Chuck E. Cheese. 

It was loud and absolutely filled with scientists that all looked the same. One was in the corner with a saxophone for some reason. You stayed on the edges of the apparent birthday party, recognizing the man it was celebrating to be one of those in the Science Team Darnold had talked about. One of the ones you dimly remembered threatening. 

In quiet tones, barely audible against the music, you told Darnold that you didn’t mind if he went to mingle. Sure enough, the mixologist stopped hovering near you and took off within a few minutes of arrival. You kept an eye on the stunned-looking scientist up until the birthday boy wandered over to your corner. 

Hello, he said, and you scrambled to place a name. Finding that you couldn’t remember one, you tried to recall how you had known him. You had offered him a Beyblade, you think.

By the man's feet, a large (and very… fake-looking) dog stood, looking more like a picture than anything else. Frozen stared at it, mumbling something along the lines of ‘that’s your dog’ to the man who obviously  _ knew _ that he owned a dog.

The birthday man nodded and introduced the dog as Sunkist. Then himself as Tommy. Just as you were reciting their names to yourself so you would remember them, he asked if you were the one who had attacked them.

Deciding to be truthful, you gave a short shrug and told Tommy that you couldn’t remember. 

Ah, Tommy said, and reached down to somehow pet Sunkist. He watched you curiously, and asked if his dad had brought you here. You told him that you guessed so.

Tommy bobbed his head again, this time to the tune of the music, and made to move on. You reached out before he got away, and immediately regretted it when Tommy flinched in response. Withdrawing, but needing to ask something, you stalled. So many questions burned in your mind, dancing on the tip of your tongue. Was the security guard you had shot really Benry? Why couldn’t you remember anything? Had you given Tommy one of your Beyblades?  _ What was happening _ ?

Instead of formulating something intelligible, you just asked him why.

Tommy considered you for a long moment, looking eerily blank. Slowly, he told you that it was because you were awake, he guessed. That it had been nice of Benry to keep you up. Then he dropped the serious demeanor and smiled. Carrying on, he left you with instructions to enjoy the party, Mr. Forzen. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen, and for lack of anywhere else to go, you were living with Darnold. 

First though, you had moved into an apartment alone, unable to return to your previous dorm at your college for obvious reasons. Additionally, something seemed to keep you from calling your family (it wasn’t physical. You could pick up the phone and dial the number but your hand shook when you went to the keyboard, and your mind blanked when you tried to think of the number.) So you crashed in the cheapest place you could find.

When you opened up your battered laptop, you were met with a pop up claiming that you were being ‘let go’ (expelled?) and that a check would be regularly sent to your address. With no idea how they got that on your computer (or found your address for that matter), you had little choice but to shrug it off in favor of watching low quality run-throughs of games. At any moment, you expected to be dragged kicking and screaming from your couch by a horde of soldiers, for abandoning post and going rogue, but nothing happened. After tiring of the waiting game you tried calling the number of your college (listed on several of their merch and supplies), and were told by an artificial voice that the number was no longer available. You officially gave up on trying to make sense of what had happened to the military.

A few days passed before you got the strength to drag yourself out to pick up the mail, and along with a few bills, there was a check. It was enough to sustain the apartment for the next while, and if the email had been telling the truth, you doubted you would have to look for a job anytime soon. 

Another week passed before somebody knocked at his door. Suspicious of your first visitor in weeks, you glanced out the window and flung the door open once realizing who was standing outside.

Darnold greeted you, waving shyly, clad in a turtleneck sweater and a large jacket. His pockets were weighed down with potions that clinked together when he moved. You mumbled something close to a response and let him inside. 

As Darnold made his way inside, you gestured to your couch, suddenly self-aware of how much of a mess the place had ended up in. You hoped fervently that the other wouldn’t bring it up.

He didn’t. 

The first thing the scientist did aside from sit down was offer you a drink, and then to ask if you had heard anything from Mr. Coolatta. Throwing caution to the wind (because you trusted Darnold after even a short time together like you had been) you cracked open whatever he had given you, deciding that you would have been poisoned far earlier if that had been the intent.

Sipping at the carbonated Powerade, you considered his question, and asked if he meant something from Dunkin Donuts.

Darnold laughed, and you could not help but stare as he tipped back a drink of his own and cleared up some of the confusion. Coolatta was the last name of the man who had been having the Minion themed party at Chuck E. Cheese.

You told Darnold that no, you hadn’t heard anything from Tommy. 

This made him frown a bit, and he sat forward. You mimicked his posture and listened as Darnold went into detail about the different members of the Science Team, casually insulting several of them in the process as he went through how incompetent the lot of them were at following directions without being arrested. Aside from blanching when Darnold mentioned a bank robbery, you kept your interruptions to a minimum.

Once you were filled in, Darnold gave you his attention, apparently expecting something in return. In a panic with nothing to say, you turned on an old video by the Irate Gamer and slowly relaxed when Darnold mentioned having watched him before. 

The next time, you messaged Darnold through the number that had been hastily scrawled and placed on a desktop and visited his place. It was a proper house even though it was a rental. Darnold had obviously put thought into his living quarters where you hadn’t.

After several weeks of crashing on Darnolds' much more comfortable couch and generally being at his home more than your own crappy apartment (in your defense, the air had gone out), the scientist casually suggested that you move in. You, just as casually, accepted. 

There wasn’t much to move over, though you finally remembered a storage facility that had some belongings stashed in it once you had properly moved in. You went over to it one afternoon and returned with a game console, a few games to go along with it, and a Beyblade stadium. 

It was nice and peaceful at Darnold’s, and you were very quick to decide that you didn’t quite belong. Maybe being around other people just wasn’t for you anymore. It was worlds more stressful and Darnold was far too comfortable. You were going to screw it up.

When Darnold saw your old college gear and asked if you had anything else you wanted to go into, you were stuck. He would help you, he said happily, if you needed anything. 

You hadn’t been able to stutter anything out (though you rotated the thought in your mind, thinking, thinking,  _ thinking _ about what you could be), and he laid it to rest. Just like that.

It was easier (or at least made more sense) to keep to yourself more often, withdrawing into your room like you were used to doing when you lived with others (you had never been alone, really). Instead of hanging around while Darnold made potions, you exercised and went on walks. When members of the Science Team showed up, you avoided them like the plague.

Darnold obviously noticed, but It was only when you dropped a plate and froze after hearing Benry’s name that the scientist stepped in, and cautiously told you that he was worried. 

___________________________________

Your name was Forzen and you had a therapist. It was impossible to remember your surname, and there was no trace of your family ever living anywhere near your old address. The faces and names of your siblings eluded you, and aside from the knowledge that you  _ had _ some amount of brothers and sisters, you couldn’t make out anything specific about them.

Forgetting your name was something that apparently happened to you sometimes. You had just never noticed it before people started asking you for it (something made you doubt that you had had one before Benry had asked for it, especially after an enlightening conversation with one of the older scientists on the Science Team.). Darnold was usually there to help, and when your therapist asked, you confirmed that you had a mantra to remind yourself of your name and current goals. It seemed that there had always been one in a running dialogue, back in the recesses of your mind.

You were doing well, all things considered. Well enough that Darnold suggested that you accompany him to one of the Science Team’s meetups, and against better judgement, you agreed. 

Of course, that meant seeing Benry again. (Who had… died? At some point? Chatting with Tommy Coolatta had cleared up some of it. The man seemed very nonchalant about the whole ordeal. Apparently Benry had died many times). That was fine, and you were fully prepared for it. (You weren’t. The only thing you could remember was the feeling of the gun’s recoil as it emptied a bullet into Benry’s skull.)

At first you were anxious. That quickly turned to a boiling fury once you realized that you were being actively avoided.

Every time you stepped away from the safety of Darnold’s side to approach them (still dressed as a security guard for some reason), Benry turned to stare blankly in your direction before talking very loudly at Gordon Freeman, who always reacted dramatically while grinning, causing enough of a spectacle for you to be sufficiently warded off for the next few minutes. 

Once you stepped towards Benry only for it to happen  _ again _ for the sixth time in the last two hours, you stormed back over to Darnold, seething that you were going to kill them again.

The scientist glanced over in the direction of the others. You followed his gaze and watched Benry flip you off at a distance. Then Darnold turned back to you and smiled encouragingly, telling you that you should go for it anyway.

His words were wise, so you nodded. Rather than waiting for there to be a lull in the conversation again, you went ahead and stormed back over in the security guards direction. Ignoring the pointed muttering of the pyromaniac off to the side, you stopped in front of Benry, who was loudly remarking about the bee population at a very tired looking Tommy. 

You’re avoiding me, you snapped at him, and Benry gave you a dry look. All their looks were dry, but this one in particular was one that you had seen a lot while dating them.  _ Duh _ , it seemed to say. (They always seemed to know more than you did at any given point. Apparently, they  _ did _ know more than you, about what you were. What the world around you was. It was still irritating.)

Rather than inspiring amusement like it once had, it fueled the burning hatred in your chest, and before you realized it, your fist ached, and you were drawing back from punching Benry’s face.

The being blinked at you, more dazed than in pain. But up close, you could see the way Benry’s eyes went a bit wider than usual, a bit of alertness coming into them as they narrowed on either side of their now crooked nose. So, you grabbed their shoulder and punched them again.

Wait, Gordon Freeman fretted off to the side, moving closer. Tommy Coolatta simply told him that they needed to work this out as you hit Benry again.

That hit seemed to shock some sense into them, and Benry roughly shoved you back, asking you what your problem was.

You, you told Benry. Scrambling to find the words you had practiced time and time again with your therapist, you fumbled for another moment before giving up and reaffirming that they were the problem.

They sort of shrugged, their movements loose and clumsy. They told you that it sounded more like a problem. Benry made to step around, but you stepped into their way. They were quick to alert you of their impeded movement.

No, you told them. You were going to talk to them. Or maybe hit them again.

Benry looked more annoyed with this than anything else.

Struggling to keep up their attention, you stepped in their way again. Then you reminded them that none of it was Real. That they had told you none of it was Real. Benry stopped trying to shove past you long enough to give you a bewildered look. It morphed into something more expressive (though you found it hard to place), and out from their lips slipped a few yellow orbs. You recognized the tone, but for the first time, could acknowledge the physicality of it. You looked to the orbs, and reminded them that they had  _ shown _ you none of it was Real.

More bubbles trailed out, and they looked down. Benry always held their arms out a bit unnaturally, like they were being held up by something. (Invisible strings). Then they grumbled about stupid NPC’s being unable to see what was there.

You could feel your voice dwindling down into a grumble to match their volume as you went on. Thought you were talking about  _ us _ , you admitted. They looked annoyed (but not angry) as they asked what you meant.

Team Nice, of course, you responded. The words poured out fluidly.

You stared at them. Benry finally stared back. They had been taller than you when you were both younger, but they had stopped growing early, despite whatever tricks they had tried to show you the day before you had broken up. The being in front of you was short and stocky, and as calm as their expression was, Benry looked tense. 

Encouraged, you remembered something. Something that both of you were. So you went on, telling Benry that there were no villains allowed on Team Nice, Real or not.

Off to the side, Gordon Freeman made a frustrated noise, obviously confused at whatever spectacle the two of you were causing. 

Benry, seemingly fed up with the last statement, muttered for you to calm down, and  _ walked _ through you.

Whipping around as you tried to ignore how off-putting that was (had felt), you grabbed your ex’s arm. They stood like that for a long minute before Benry glanced back. Their bright (luminescent) eyes darted around in hallowed, sunken sockets before they looked down and asked you if you wanted to hold up a Gamestop with them.

You stared at him. Benry stared back. Then you nodded gravely in response.

Darnold sidled on over. You were dimly aware that the two of you were being dramatic enough for the group as a whole to pay attention to, but things were a bit confusing at the moment, so you decided that you didn’t quite care.

Darnold offered you some potions. He wasn’t going with you of course, but he was interested in what he had heard regarding an Epic Mickey, if they had any?

You rattled off the names of a few potions, including Evil Powerade and whatever he called his explosive one.

Darnold handed over a few cans of what looked like Dr. Pepper. 

Gamer Fuel, Benry chimed in, though they hadn’t been asked. Darnold looked a bit pained but handed over a Monster. 

_ What _ ? Gordon asked, sounding pained as you walked past him. 

Your name was Forzen, and you weren’t quite sure what was going on. Except that you and your ex were going to rob a Gamestop.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I've done it. I've written way more for this fandom than I thought I would. Idk how I feel about this one. I'm concerned I didn't get the characterization right, despite it being a character study. 
> 
> Oh well. He had a time. I had a time. We all had a nice time. Thanks for reading. Comments,,, fuel me.


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